


Ryuu no Ongaeshi

by PyrophobicDragon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Shapeshifting, a bit of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrophobicDragon/pseuds/PyrophobicDragon
Summary: Fairy-tale-esque story loosely based on the Japanese story of The Crane Wife.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title theoretically translates to "Dragon's return of a favor," which is a play off the title of the original story.

Once upon a time, there lived a cowboy. He no longer had fondness for people, so he lived an hour’s walk outside the nearest town. He made a meager living hunting and foraging, walking an hour there and an hour back to sell what he could find. Sometimes, if he could, he would hunt people, because it pays more than hunting animals, but it was also more expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous, so he didn’t do it much.

 

One snowy day, he was walking to town once again when he heard a fearsome roar. The cowboy was not a weak-willed man, nor was he a particularly self-preserving man, so he immediately turned and walked towards the roar. But as he drew closer, he noticed that the roar wasn’t a roar of anger or a roar of victory. It sounded...sad. As he crested the last hill, he immediately understood why, only to lose his mind in awe.

 

A long, blue, serpentine creature, about as long as a man laying down, lay on its side in the snow. When it noticed the cowboy’s approach, it squirmed and roared again, shying away from him. But it couldn’t do more than that, thanks to the growing patch of blood on its side.

 

The cowboy held out his empty hands. “Hey, there. I promise I won’t hurt you. Let me take a look at your side, huh?”

 

The dragon growled at him and snapped its jaws. The cowboy blinked. Then he unbuckled his belt, with the gun and the ammo, and dropped it on the ground.

 

It’s the dragon’s turn to blink at him. It finally huffed and looked away as the cowboy stepped closer and kneels by its side. He takes a moment so wonder why the dragon didn’t just fly away. Maybe it figured no one could find it out here?

 

Inspecting the wound, the cowboy knew why. The object that downed the dragon was shaped more like an arrow head--meant to stay in the body and shift around with movement, causing pain. The cowboy gingerly touched it, making the dragon whimper. “I have to take it out. This will hurt. Try not to kill me, please.”

 

The dragon just closed its eyes and clenched its jaw tight. The cowboy grasped the weapon with his metal hand and pulled as hard as he can.

 

The roar of pain was deafening. The dragon thrashed and writhed, forcing the cowboy to crawl backwards to avoid getting hit by the undulating body.

 

The dragon finally settled down, panting in agony. As soon as it did, the cowboy crawled forward, pulling bandages out of his bag. After the wound is cleaned and dressed, the cowboy stepped away. “You’re good to go, partner. Take care.”

 

He’s met by a stare from the dragon. He wondered idly what the dragon was looking for as the dragon inspected every inch of him. Finally, finally, the dragon bowed, then turned and somehow flew up, up, up, into the sky, disappearing among the clouds.

 

The cowboy stood there for a long moment, wondering if he imagined that.

 

***

 

Two days later, the cowboy looks out the window of the little shack he lived in. A snowstorm rages outside, and he groans. There was no way he was getting to town today. No being alive could go out in that storm.

 

Almost as soon as he had that thought, there was a knock on the door.

 

He freezes, then realizes the person outside would probably freeze if he doesn’t move quickly. He stands up and takes the three strides to the door.

 

There’s a man outside. Shorter than him. Greying dark hair in a ponytail, whipped around by the wind, tied with a yellow ribbon. Sharp features, warm brown eyes. He’s wrapped in a thin cloak completely unsuited for the weather. And his lips are turning blue, so the cowboy ushers him inside without thinking.

 

After he’s been given coffee and sat by the fire, the man bows in thanks and explains, “I am a hunter, passing through, but I got caught in the snowstorm. Thank you for saving me.”

 

The cowboy smiles. “It is no trouble.”

 

The snowstorm lasts for a week. In that week, the cowboy learns more about the hunter. He learns that he is soft-spoken and well-read, that he has impeccable control over his emotions, that he hunts with a bow and arrow but lost his equipment in the storm. He learns that he is from a city called Hanamura in Japan, and that he visits his hometown every year. He learns that he has a great big tattoo of a dragon on his arm, and he learns that alongside the fact that the man has a incredible body. He learns that he is funny and a bit sarcastic, which the cowboy likes, and that he is a bit sad much of the time but when he smiles, small and soft, it’s the most beautiful thing the cowboy has seen.

 

When the snowstorm finally subsides, the cowboy reluctantly gives the man a cloak of furs to keep him warm, and the man reluctantly moves to put on his shoes. At the doorway, the cowboy gives in and grasps the man’s wrist and blurts, “Please don’t go.”

 

This time, the man’s smile is blinding.

 

The pair live together. They hunt together, they sleep curled up together. And the cowboy is happier than he has been in a long time.

 

So happy, he nearly forgets why he is allowed to stay here.

 

Three weeks after the hunter arrived, there’s another knock on the door. The cowboy idly jokes, “If it’s another lost hunter I’m turning him down. We barely have enough room for two in here.” His hunter chuckles in response, but both of their smiles fade when the door is opened to reveal three men. Two of them are carrying guns. The one in the middle speaks. “You owe us money.”

 

The cowboy growls, “I gave you a thousand five hundred last month.”

 

“You owe us five hundred more.”

 

“A thousand per month, that’s what the deal was,” says the cowboy, crossing his arms. Behind him, the hunter shifts uncomfortably. The speaking man scowls.

 

“The deal changed. Your bounty went up, cowboy. Five hundred by tonight, or we go cash in that thirty thousand.”

 

With that, the trio leave. The hunter stands up and moves to the tin where the cowboy keeps their money, counting. He looks up. “Three hundred fifty-two dollars.”

 

“...fuck.”

 

The hunter moves to wrap his arms around his waist. “Thirty thousand?”

 

The cowboy nods. “I’m a wanted man, darling.”

 

They stand there like that for a while. Then the hunter closes his eyes and says, “I can get you a hundred fifty dollars.”

 

“...what?”

 

“Give me an hour, and I can make you something worth far more than a hundred fifty.” He pauses, then adds, “But there’s a catch: you can’t watch what I’m doing. You can only see the final product.”

 

Puzzled, the cowboy agrees. They hang a sheet up from the ceiling so the cowboy can’t see what the hunter is doing. And the cowboy waits.

 

And waits.

 

And waits.

 

After an hour, the hunter emerges. He’s holding a beautiful length of cloth. It shimmers and glows, and folds as if it was made of a thousand tiny sequins, or maybe scales. The cowboy looks at it and is suddenly reminded of the dragon he saw weeks ago. But his attention is soon arrested by how pale the hunter looks.

 

Before he can go over and fuss, the hunter holds out the cloth. “You only have a few hours. Hurry to town.”

 

“But….”

 

“I am fine.”

 

So the cowboy reluctantly goes, leaving the hunter lying on the bed.

 

The cloth sells for three hundred dollars.

 

As soon as the debt is repaid, the cowboy hurries home, where the hunter is still in bed. The cowboy makes him some warm soup and worries over his weakened state.

 

But worry is all he can do.

 

Time crawls on. The cowboy’s bounty crawls higher, and with it, the money he owes. Soon, their hunting cannot keep up with the demands, so the hunter makes more and more cloth, always disappearing behind the curtain and emerging paler than before. The hunter now spends more time in bed then out of it, and any hunting trips he makes are short.

 

The cowboy starts packing. He cannot stay here anymore if it’s at the expense of his hunter.

 

The day it falls apart is a day that the cowboy goes to town. When he returns, the hunter is nowhere to be found: not in bed, not in the bathroom, not outside. He drops the medicine he purchased on the bedside table and calls for his hunter. No response.

 

In a panic, the cowboy double checks every inch of his house. And he reaches for the curtain--

 

The dragon is behind the curtain, laying in a pile of scattered small blue scales, with a partially-finished piece of the iridescent cloth in its paws.

 

It looks--exhausted. Instead of the bright vibrant blue, its scales are pale and colorless. Large portions were missing, leaving bare patches. Its warm brown eyes are downcast and--

 

Warm brown eyes.

 

The cowboy can’t explain what happens immediately next. It’s as if the dragon just--stands up? and is suddenly the hunter. The hunter looks at the cloth in his hands and says, quietly, “I’m sorry.”

 

The cowboy goes, “Wait--”

 

And the dragon says, “I cannot stay with you.”

 

And he walks outside. The cowboy is desperate now, scrambling to follow. “Please, please, darling, stay. Don’t go. Don’t leave me here.”

 

The dragon looks at the cowboy one last time, looking him closely as if trying to memorize his face. “Thank you for saving me. I love you, Jesse.”

  
Then he turns into a dragon and flies off into the sky, and Hanzo is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

The cowboy packs his things and leaves the house. He cannot stay here anymore. He doesn’t want to.

 

He has enough money to buy a plane ticket, and enough memory to buy one to Japan. He knows it’s hopeless. His dragon can be anywhere in the world, but he does not know what to do but try.

 

It takes eleven hours to get to Tokyo. It takes another three to get to Hanamura.

 

He spends two days wandering around the city. He has money--one last gift from his dragon, he thinks bitterly, and what better way to use it than to find him?--but he doesn’t know the language, or know the area, or know anything other than the name of the city and the fact that his dragon comes back every year.

 

He tries to think about the time, tries to figure when the dragon would be back in the city. But he knows nothing.

 

He gets a job teaching English in a tutoring school. The kids find his cowboy hat amusing. They try to teach him Japanese, and if their giggles are any indication, he’s speaking terribly.

 

Valentine’s day rolls around a few weeks later. His desk is covered in chocolates, and he figures out he’s a very popular teacher.

 

The kids teach him how to say, “I love you.”

 

Every day, walking to work, he walks past two giant wooden gates with an emblem of two dragons. The kids tell him not to go near there. It’s a remnant of a clan gone only recently, clinging to what power they have left.

 

The cowboy thinks of the cyborg ninja he knew, and he’s glad for him.

 

But still, when he’s walking home, he likes to stop and look at the emblem. It reminds him, in some weird way, of his dragon.

 

He gets the idea to ask the kids what they know about people turning into dragons in mythology. They shrug at each other. They suggest it might be a curse, perhaps, or a boon. One brings up the myth of the nine-tailed fox, about how she cannot let anyone know about her true form. The cowboy nods and changes the subject.

 

The next day, the kids bring him every book, fable, and tale they can find on shapeshifters. He can appreciate how much effort they put into this. He asks them to translate the books for homework.

 

He reads one story about a crane, and a woodcutter, and a cloth of feathers. Halfway through the story, he can’t read the next line, and he realizes it’s because tears are blurring his eyes. When he nears the end, when the crane flies off, he goes to turn the page over, to see what happened next, but there’s only white paper. 

 

He wonders if he’s ever going to see his dragon again.

 

He lives this half-existence for far too long. He learns the town better than the back of his own hand. He spends time in the arcade, in the ramen shop, in the little stores that populate the town. 

 

He never enters the wooden gates. 

 

He slowly but surely learns Japanese, although his speaking leaves much to be desired. He becomes a familiar face around town, charming and handsome and foreign.

 

Two women come up to him one day, the older dragging the younger, who’s blushing terribly. He looks at them, confused, as the older one talks rapidly. He catches daughter--man--woman--dinner and realizes. He thinks about warm brown eyes and the half-finished cloth of scales in his apartment. His silence must have spoken for itself because the young woman drags off the older lady, bowing and mumbling apologies. 

 

That night he dreams of soft skin and black hair across his chest. He wakes up at two in the morning with cold sweats and a simultaneous desire to both sink back into his dreams and to never sleep again. He wonders how long he’s willing to do this. He tosses and turns the rest of the night, but by the time he hauls himself out of bed to get ready for work, he knows the answer: 

 

As long as it takes.

 

When he walks past the wooden gates, one of them is slightly ajar.

 

He’s dead on his feet that day at school. The kids don’t seem any better, slouching and slumping and hazy-eyed. He gives up halfway through the lesson and moves to sit on a desk. He tells them that instead of trying to teach them more, he’s going to tell them a story in English, and it’s up to them to listen or not.

 

So he tells them about a cowboy who finds a dragon in the snow. He tells them about the hunter who showed up at the cowboy’s house in the blizzard, about the cloth of scales and the debts being paid, about the last day and the dragon flying away, and the cowboy chasing after the last scrap of knowledge he has of his dragon.

 

He doesn’t know why he decided to tell the kids this. He’s always been a private man, yet here his heartbreak is spilling out for the world--or at least the kids--to judge. After his tale is told, there is only silence. Some are looking at their desks. Some are looking at him. Some aren’t listening at all. Finally, one of the kids speaks up. “It’s just like the crane wife story.” 

 

The cowboy swallows the lump in his throat and nods. 

 

“No it’s not, idiot.” 

 

The whole class turns to look at the kid who interjected, who rolls his eyes. “This time, the cowboy went after the dragon.”

 

He spends a lot of time thinking about that as he walks home. He’s so lost in his thoughts, he almost doesn’t hear the faint roar when he passes by the wooden gates.

 

Almost.

 

He freezes, and turns. The roar cuts off abruptly, but he knows, he knows he heard it. Before he fully realizes what he’s doing, he drops his bag and runs, slipping through the open gates into the yard.

 

The castle is deserted as he races through the yard, past the buildings, into the halls, trying to follow the roar echoing in his head.

 

He stops in front of a mounted sword and a hanging scroll. Turning in place, looking at the walls and doorways and rooms, trying to figure out where to go next. He knows, logically, that the roar could be from anything, that there’s very little chance that his dragon could actually be here, but he swallows and takes his chances.

 

“Hanzo?”

 

No response.

 

He tries again, louder. “Hanzo!”

 

Still nothing. 

 

“Hanzo!”

 

This time, he gets an arrow whizzing by him, hitting the ground next to him and sending out a weird pinging noise. He looks at it, puzzled. Who the hell uses a bow--

 

Oh.

 

And he turns and he’s face-to-face with his dragon for the first time in months.

 

***

 

The cowboy sits, cross-legged, as the dragon serves them both tea.

 

He can’t pull his eyes off the dragon’s face. He looks--well. He is no longer an unhealthy grey, but the sorrow on his face makes him look worse than he did the last time the cowboy saw him.

 

The cowboy waits for the tea to be served before asking, quietly, “Why did you leave me?”

 

The dragon bows his head. “I cannot tell you.”

 

“Why do you turn into a dragon?”

 

“I cannot tell you.”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

“I cannot tell you.”

 

The cowboy thinks of the crane myth. “Is that a will not, or a can not?”

 

The dragon’s silence gives him all the answer he needs.

 

He sits there in silence, looking at his dragon’s face. He remembers the way the dragon looked at him before he left all those months ago, and he knows he has the same expression on his face right now. “May I stay here?”

 

“No.”

 

The cowboy looks down at his untouched tea. He swallows the lump in his throat. “Then I’ll leave.”

 

When he stands, however, he’s stopped by a hand on his sleeve. “Before you go...please, follow me.”

 

The dragon stands and leads the way.

 

They walk through wooden hallways and old decorations and new stains of blood. The cowboy tries not to stare as they move deeper into the dragon’s lair.

 

They end up in a vast room, filled with books, scrolls, and tapestries. The dragon gestures to the table. “You may find some interesting tales there. Beyond that….”

 

“You cannot tell me. I understand.” He really does.

 

The dragon nods, and leaves the room. The cowboy walks over to the table, to the mess of books and papers. He opens one, stares, and closes it.

 

When the dragon returns to the archives, the cowboy is gone and the table is clean.

 

***

 

The kids stare as the cowboy dumps a pile of texts on his desk. “Hey, for your homework, I need you to translate this for me.”

 

Several of them already suspect the truth of the tall tale he told them, so they simply nod and each take a piece or two of the puzzle.

 

When they come back the next week with stacks of notebook paper filled with neat handwriting, the cowboy thanks them with sweets and a day doing nothing. After school, he takes them back to his apartment and reads until his eyes are blurring--with tears or with exhaustion, he’s not so sure.

 

The translations are strange and grammatically odd, since many of the students chose to do literal translations when they encountered untranslatable words. But by the time he goes to bed, with his head aching with caffeine and with the sunrise in his eyes, he knows enough.

 

He knows that the dragon cannot leave his home.

 

He knows that he cannot join the dragon in his home.

 

And he knows that nothing can break the curse but death.

 

He doesn’t go to see his dragon. Though he is willing to risk his life, he knows the dragon would not be. His days are spent in a fugue state, lost in his thoughts. Such a tale they’ve written here, he thinks. He’s chased his dragon to another land and finally caught him again, only to have to let him go on his doorstep.

 

They’re a real-life fairytale, only one that ends in tragedy.

 

On his way to and from his work, he always stops and touches the wooden gates that keep his lover trapped. He wonders what his dragon is doing. He wonders if he knows the cowboy thinks of him. He wonders if he’s lonely.

 

His thoughts are often scattered. He goes quiet in class sometimes while thinking, simply trailing off into silence. The kids are concerned, but there is nothing they can do. He thinks and thinks, his mind swirling with his dragon like a hurricane.

 

But with any storm, there is the eye of calm.

 

On his way back home one day, he thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and breaks into a run.

 

In his apartment, he pulls out his phone and dials a contact he hasn’t called in years. And he prays that she’ll pick up.

 

The phone rings for a long time, and he feels hope dying in his chest. And then the ringing cuts off, and a light female voice answers.

 

“Cowboy?”

 

He can’t keep the smile off his face or the relief out of his voice. “Hey, angel. Could you induce clinical death in someone and bring them back to life?”

 

***

 

The flight to Switzerland is twelve hours, and they hold hands almost the entire time. He tries to distract his dragon by telling him about the angel, and his dragon is polite enough to nod along, but it is obvious his mind is a thousand miles away.

 

Their plane touches down, and he greets the angel with a hug and a, “Thank you for doing this.”

 

She takes them to her clinic and asks the dragon a bunch of questions. He answers them calmly, but the cowboy can feel the way he squeezes his hand.

 

Then she sends the cowboy outside to wait while she kills his lover.

 

***

 

At 11:34 p.m local time, the dragon’s heart stops. The angel waits for as long as she can before restarting his vitals.

 

At 12:04 a.m, the dragon takes a breath.

 

***

 

The dragon tries not to hope. The curse was an ancient thing, not to be cast nor tested lightly.

 

They have no way to tell if his curse is broken or not, except to wait and see if he suffers away from his home. Part of him wishes to return to his prison, forget that he ever met a cowboy in the North, forget everything about the outside world until his body rots away like his heart.

  
The other part of him looks at the cowboy’s out stretched hand, and takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for giving you guys a long cliffhanger. I couldn't figure out how to handle the curse, so in the end I just glossed over it. Still not sure if it's internally consistent, but MEH. 
> 
> What the angel does is an actual medical procedure called DHCA, which can keep patients clinically dead for up to one hour without brain damage! Science is cool!

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter ends where the original tale(s) do. However, I am a sucker for happy endings, so the second chapter will make things hurt less. I'll try to get it out ASAP so you lot aren't left hanging for too long....


End file.
